


Dissociative Amnesia

by bbvqueen



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Anal Sex, Blood, Death, Disturbing Themes, Dubious Consent, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Identity Issues, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mindfuck, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rough Sex, Violence, dark themes, tpp spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-23 21:28:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4892953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbvqueen/pseuds/bbvqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because there’s always time for a quickie during a dramatic hospital escape.</p><p>“Dissociative amnesia occurs when a person blocks out certain information, usually associated with a stressful or traumatic event.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dissociative Amnesia

**Dhekelia SBA Memorial Hospital, Cyprus**

**March 11th, 1984 02:26**

 

Smoke.

It’s the only thing to fill his lungs – just as fire fills his vision, the stench of blood his nostrils, and distant gunfire his ears. He keeps running. It’s like he’s been reborn into a burning world, where peace never lasts longer than a few seconds and must be traded for bullets. This world wanted him dead before he’d even been alive, cut him out like a growing tumor; flush him out like parasite before it can copulate. If it weren’t for the one man guiding him through the unfurling chaos and towards the outside to breathe fresh air, the vile beast would have surely gotten its will, and pulled him back under to rest forever at the bottom of the sea.

“This way!”

The weapon he’s been given weighs heavily in Ahab’s only remaining hand, familiar yet foreign. He follows Ishmael’s call and rounds the corner in front of him, almost stumbling over his own feet. He can’t tell if the hospital’s shaking – turned into a slaughterhouse – or his own broken body, still at odds with the unyielding mind pushing it forward and beyond its human limits. Right now, he lives only for the next step, the next breath, the next heartbeat, all stolen from the dead surrounding them.

Ishmael gestures him to stop, and he does after stepping over another corpse, wheezing. His chest hurts, and so does everything else, but it’s only a dull throb. He can ignore it.

“There’s two of them, heading our way,” Ishmael says in a hushed voice, analyzing the situation calmly. Ahab glances briefly at the shadows he can spot from their cover, a few feet down the hallway. _Who are they?_ He wants to ask, not for the first time, but it doesn’t matter. They have no faces, only guns.

“Wait until they get close, then we’ll pick them off. I’ll take the one on the right, left one’s yours. Got it? On my command. I _know_ you can do this.”

He sounds surer of this than Ahab would himself, but his confidence helps keeping him grounded and preventing a panic attack that would have long trapped any other man in a firm choke hold. His words and presence allow him to focus, find his footing – and consequently, make the right decisions. Ishmael briefly and reassuringly touches his gun arm, and Ahab nods. Then he’s off, silently relocating to the other side of the hallway, leaving Ahab’s side. His lone eye follows his bandaged head as he moves until he’s out of sight, and he flattens himself against the wall, waiting for the signal.

He’s quiet, keeping his breathing shallow and listening to the footsteps of the approaching hostiles while his fingers clamp down securely on the pistol’s grip. He’s a soldier himself – he has years of experience to draw from, all he has to do is let his body act and react naturally, without thinking about it too much.

_I know I can do this._

He can do this, despite the foggy vision, the faded colors, and the lightheaded feeling that had been creeping up on him, slowly but steadily – or maybe it had always been there, pushed to the back of his mind as long as he had someone to concentrate and rely on. Now the gun’s out of focus, and again he can’t say if it’s his hand that’s trembling, or something else. Cold sweat gathers on and runs down his forehead, causing him to blink.

His own pulse becomes deafeningly loud, drowning out all other noise.

Someone hisses, “Now!”

He almost doesn’t hear him. Ahab has to force himself out of his helpless state of physical stupor, because if he doesn’t they’ll die like the others. _Left_. He pops out of cover, aiming his gun with the finger crooked around the trigger. The muzzle shakes, he hesitates.

There are two. Two on the left side and they look the same, all white, no faces, carrying the same gun. _Which one..._

“What are you waiting for?! Shoot!”

He realizes too late who is who, can distinguish them only by the sound of Ishmael’s voice which has alerted the soldier on his side to his position. There’s sounds of a scuffle, a pistol clattering to the ground, a silenced gunshot. Shapes blurring into one another. The weight of the gun drags his hand down, and that’s when it happens.

Something hits the side of his – the one with the shrapnel – head, hard. Metal. It almost knocks him off his feet, and only out of the corner of his eye can he vaguely make out a rifle, being cocked.

A heartbeat. Ishmael’s voice again, ringing in his ears and pulling at him.

“ _No!_ ”

Ahab raises his weapon in front of himself, and shoots, blindly. The bullet tears through tissue, lodges itself in a skull. Blood splatters and hits the wall behind him, his face, his shoulders, and his chest. Another body crumples into a heap, but he’s still standing. Just barely, but he’s standing.

He’s alive.

The world starts to spin faster around him, and he can’t keep holding up his own weight, or the one of the gun. The hallway goes dark, he lets go, and he falls. He’s about to hit the ground, but someone catches him, arms stronger than his own.

“Shit,” Ishmael curses, and then there’s nothing.

***

When he comes to again, an unfamiliar face fills the entirety of his bleary vision. Dead eyes stare right through him, mouth agape. There’s a hole in the temple, fresh blood still running down the forehead in a small rivulet.

Ahab fights down his urge to gag, the smell overwhelming. Instead he scrambles to push himself off the ground, groaning and grunting, but he’s feeling dizzy and has not enough control over all of his limbs, phantom or no. The hook of his prosthetic scratches over the linoleum floor, producing an ugly noise. How long has he been out...?

“Eyes open again?” It’s Ishmael, somewhere behind him. Ahab’s managed to prop himself up on an elbow at long last, looking over the corpse wearing a white lab coat. Hospital staff. A doctor, most likely, dead in his own office. Where’s his gun?

“Good, because I wasn’t looking forward to carrying you all the way outside. Increases our chances of getting _shot_ drastically.” He looks over his bloodstained shoulder to spot Ishmael wandering from one window to the next, cautiously checking for enemy activity, if he’d have to guess. Far in the distance, he can hear rotor blades cutting through the air. Another chopper.

“They’re gonna bomb the hell out of this place...” He murmurs, to himself more than Ahab.

_Bomb...?_

“Why... aren’t you saving yourself,” Ahab rasps, voice thin. Not because he wants Ishmael to leave him behind, but considering how dire their situation seems to be, it doesn’t make much sense to him why the man would continue to watch over someone who’s clearly a liability.

“Who says I’m not? It’s our story,” comes the cryptic reply, without sparing a glance in his direction. “I can’t finish it without you.” A thoughtful pause. “Besides, all this is happening because of you. If you don’t leave here alive, these people will have died for nothing.”

 _Because of me..._ His mind begins to backtrack, recalls the doctor’s warnings, then the woman who’d strangulated him, but her real target had been Ahab. He can still feel her hands around his throat, choking him into unconsciousness. If she had succeeded right then and there, would any of this have happened? Would everyone else still be alive? Would there be fewer nightmares in this world?

But it’s difficult to think in terms of _yesterday_ and _tomorrow_ when there’s only _now_. His head hurts trying to piece more disjointed images together like some gruesome puzzle – there’s another inferno which started it all, the one that put him here and took his arm, years back in the Caribbean. Bullets whizzing past them, people screaming and dying like flies. Pillars of flame and smoke against the night sky, an out of control bonfire. Mother Base being devoured by the ocean, together with everyone that called it their home. The explosion...

_This isn’t right, that was ours! **GIVE IT BACK!**_

He’s Big Boss. The man that should have died, but didn’t. He’s still alive in another place, and hell followed him here.

A hell that will swallow him for sure this time and not spit him out again if he doesn’t get back up to his feet, he knows. It seems almost impossible right now, and when he moves again he slips and crashes back down onto the ground, landing hard on his shoulder. Every muscle in his body burns, and he can’t seem to find his center of gravity.

“Can you move?” Ishmael asks.

“Just barely...” Ahab replies, after a few seconds. He rolls onto his back to try again. “World feels upside-down. Can’t focus on anything. Something in my gut – gonna puke...“

“Giving you an entire shot of digoxin was probably a bad idea,” Ishmael laments, with a sigh. He’s crossing the room over to Ahab’s side, where he lowers himself to a crouch, planting a hand on his upper arm.

“It has some – funny adverse effects,” he goes on to explain, and starts to pull Ahab up into a sitting position. He feels the silencer of his gun pressing into his side. “Just didn’t think you’d be susceptible to them. Dizziness, nausea... hallucinations, the works.”

Ahab shifts back, leaning against a cabinet. Still not back on his feet, and he feels sore and like he’s floating, but he supposes this is a start.

“This one’s new, though.”

Instead of asking, _what is_ , he finds Ishmael’s gaze, and follows it. He’s staring between his legs. More specifically, the tent in his pants.

He doesn’t even have a response to that discovery, because he’s too out of it to care much about shame. It still doesn’t make things easier – especially walking, should they ever get back to that. He breathes a defeated sigh, hangs his head. The awkward silence is only disrupted by by a couple of gunshots – upper floor. They’re still going through the rooms.

“That wasn’t the first time you killed a man.” He cannot tell if that’s a statement or a question, and Ahab isn’t sure he understands what he means. “I –  _we_ don’t really have enough time for – “ Ishmael interrupts himself, makes a placative gesture. This isn’t even remotely going according to plan, he figures.

_Talking to himself, huh._

“All right, you try and take care of this. I’ll see if I can find anything that helps with your other problems. We gotta get moving, and soon. They’ll be converging at the front door before long, and that’s where the cars are. We really fucking need one. Can you do that?”

It’s a question laced with doubt this time, not an assertion. Ahab nods, weakly – no is not an option – and Ishmael heads over to the large desk, starts to systematically go through drawers and cabinets, back turned to his companion.

It takes Ahab much longer to start with his task, his hand gingerly pulling at his waistband to bare an unwanted erection. _It’s been_ _nine years_ , the doctor’s words echo in his ears, but even so he can’t come up with a logical explanation for this, so it has to have been the digoxin. Some chemical probably didn’t mesh too well with his system, messed up the blood flow. He briefly glances at Ishmael, now busy with a bookshelf and muttering something unintelligible, then reaches for his shaft to curl his fingers around the base. Is this even going to work? Can he get off like this...?

He’s going to find out, either way. He begins to jerk himself off in slow, steady strokes, but both his palm and cock are awfully dry, so it’s raw and nothing slides very well. It’s more painful than anything, and having not used his body much less his reproductive organs in such a long time, he’s more sensitive than he would like.

The corpse right next to him doesn’t help, so he tries to find something else to focus on. There’s only one other living person in the room, so he stubbornly continues to drag his fist up and down his length as he watches Ishmael searching for medication he already knows he’s not gonna find.

He’s just being polite, circumstances be damned. Even he can see that, and then something else when his gaze drifts lower to the small of his partially exposed back. His hand starts to move faster.

And then it’s definitely the hospital shaking, caused by an explosion is set off somewhere nearby. He can make out a devastating flash of red and yellow through the window, and both men come to an abrupt halt when some flying piece of debris, about the size of a brick, hits the glass, shattering it.

“Shit, **_SHIT_ _!_** ” Ishmael exclaims, voice shrill. He takes a step back before he dashes towards the broken window to assess the damage, then he redirects his attention to Ahab.

“This is taking too long!”

He’s not gonna argue that one. Looks like they may have to move regardless, and Ahab expects the other man to come and pick him up, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. What he does, instead, when he gets back down on one knee, is spit into his own palm – and aim right for his dick, swatting Ahab’s hand out of the way. The other one grips his shoulder firmly, keeping him steady.

“Ungh – “ He doesn’t protest, just sharply inhales air through gritted teeth when Ishmael immediately starts to pump him with the same professional routine he displayed when replacing a magazine, hard and fast and slick, like he’s handling a gun rather than another guy’s prick. He finishes every stroke with a little twist, and it doesn’t take long until Ahab’s hips begin to move on their own, thrusting subtly into his palm, chest heaving with growing – genuine – arousal.

He tries to tune out their surroundings again and focus on his face this time, but the bandages transform it into a blank canvas, and even his eyes are mostly overcast with shadow. He can make out one thing, though – that his gaze flickers back and forth, that he refuses to maintain eye contact or even look at Ahab’s face for too long. It’s easy to assume that it’s embarrassment, that he’s uncomfortable, but somehow he doesn’t think that’s it.

He gives a low, satisfied moan, barely audible. For the first time since waking up in that bed, he’s almost able to forget about the pain.

“Who are you?” He asks him, a slight strain to his voice.

“I told you already,” Ishmael answers, dodging both the question and the persistent stare – but something gives, eventually, making room for curiosity, and Ahab can feel his gaze resting on his face after another minute, staying there. It’s heavy. Reassuring, in a way. He looks at him and feels like everything is going to work out in the end, somehow, that he can make it out alive and whole, even knowing that he hasn’t been whole in a long time.

Only belatedly does he take note of the hand lifting off his shoulder, disappearing somewhere below, between them. Ishmael heaves a shaky sigh, then he grates something out Ahab’s not sure he was supposed to hear.

“I swear you’re going to get us _both_ killed at this rate.” There’s an accusatory undercurrent in his tone, something that stings, but maybe he just imagined that. He leans forward, just an inch, prosthetic brushing aside part of his gown and he catches glimpse of another moving hand – right before he loses his balance again and sways a little too far to the left.

Ishmael doesn’t catch him this time, and he ends up on his bruised shoulder, with a pained grunt. Laying on his side, he tries to reorient himself, instinctively searching for Ishmael as his chosen lynchpin.

His open palms are hovering in mid-air, corners of his mouth turned down in what he perceives to be a partially hidden frown.

“This isn’t gonna work...”

Not enough hands between the two of them, and not enough time to do more than the nitty-gritty. How much of it has passed? How many soldiers are now in the hospital, how many are still alive? Are they the only ones?

Those questions keep his mind occupied as he fumbles for leverage, trying to get back up on his own, but the moment he manages to push his body off the ground he meets resistance, and is resolutely pushed back down. Another hand tugs at his flimsy pants, pulls one leg loose.

“Wha...?”

“Bear with it. I know you can,” Ishmael says, coolly. He spits into his hand again, more this time, though Ahab can’t see or feel what he’s doing with it, even when he cranes his neck – he only hears the wet, vulgar slide of skin when Ishmael shifts, pinning his bent knee to the floor.

The other palm covers his mouth, catching his jaw in an unyielding grip, and his eyes, healthy and damaged, go wide when Ishmael leans over him, blocking his view and casting a shadow over him.

He screams soundlessly and thrashes weakly when he’s filled by nothing but agony in its purest form, like a knife is being driven right into him. He doesn’t want to – he knows what’s happening and why – but his body reacts naturally, wants no part of this, wants to endure no more pain only so they may stand a chance at survival. What it wants is to surrender to unconsciousness, and drift away quietly never to return. He hears a familiar woman wail and cry in the distance, hears the chopper coming closer, compensating for his own silence.

_Bear with it._

He mentally and physically holds onto Ishmael, because he’s all there is. He convulses, writhes beneath him and his grasp, and the first violent thrust rocks his body, making it near impossible to breathe and focus.

And again.

“Okay now?” Ishmael asks, after slamming into him a third time, splitting him apart. His cock is thick and painful, too much for anyone, and it feels like he’s stretched to bursting.

He nods, blinking rapidly, because there is no other answer. There never has been and there never will be; it’s okay, he’s okay, he will bear with it. The calloused hand leaves his mouth, and instead wraps around his dick again, the culprit that had started all this, and jerks it off in tandem with his quickening thrusts.

“Wish I could – tell you it’s gonna get better, but it probably won’t,” Ishmael grunts, holding onto his hips while Ahab holds onto his wrist, prosthetic clacking against the ground with every stab. How long is it going to take? Can he even get off like this? It seems even more impossible than before.

He’s going to find out, whether he wants to or not. Ishmael’s movements become more urgent, impatient or passionate, he cannot say; he’s concentrating only on his non-existent face. Two blue identical eyes, he sees it now, dark and willful but so easy to get lost in.

No, that’s wrong.

There’s only one. The color of the other one’s faded, it really is _white_ , or is that just his –

 

_Who are you?_

 

_Who am I?_

 

A mouth is smashed against his; a tongue forcing itself between his chapped lips and he feels bristles he couldn’t see, tastes smoke, but it’s different from the one that fills his own lungs, the kind you subject yourself to willingly. He reciprocates reflexively, but there’s not much he can do as his lips mold against his, teeth grazing and tugging at them when he separates again.

He hears gunfire outside, a volley of shots ripping through multiple bodies of civilians trying to flee and escape a hell he’s brought about by nothing but his presence. Screams, piercing his skull. Pitiful whimpering, a woman slowly suffocates. Someone’s begging for mercy as they’re getting dragged away, leaving nothing but a trail of blood behind, and here they are, fucking like dogs amidst a sea of misery, getting off while others are getting offed.

“Now that’s,” Ishmael whispers, conspiratorially, as if he were a secret lover, “What it’s like to feel alive.”

He goes in balls deep, pounds him with the force of a sledgehammer and drives the pain into him, and he’s starting to like it; cock throbbing as something primal – something buried impossibly deep in the darkest depths of the soul – answers him.

But he can’t take all of it. Ahab’s eyes roll back into his head as he starts to fade out, the weight of his own building climax crushing him like an avalanche.

“Hey – “

Only his voice pulls him back. He looks at his face.

“Focus – “

It’s no longer blank. The overhead lamp is shining bright behind his head, like a halo, flickering on and off.

“On **_me._** ”

And off.

***

_“Focus on me.”_

_He blinked awake, blinded by the bright searchlight behind Big Boss, the chopper’s moving rotor blades blocking it in regular intervals. His Boss wrapped an arm around his shoulders and dragged him up to his feet._

_“Come on, it’s only a flesh wound. On your feet.”_

_“Oh, God. No, you should just – why did you – ” His body felt heavy, useless, refused to move. Big Boss pulled him towards the chopper._

_“They’re all dead. I was supposed to save them. We didn’t expect an ambush en route – ”_

_“It’s all right.”_

_“No, Boss, you don’t – “ He pried himself off and away from him. “Look around! I can’t go with you!“_

_“I said it’s all right! You survived, and that’s what matters. Blaming yourself won’t bring them back. I’m not going to leave you here so you can join them and die. That’s the coward’s way, and it’s not what we do, soldier.”_

_He relented._

_“I couldn’t pull the trigger,” he said, after a while. “I’m a doctor, Boss. Taking lives isn’t what I was trained to do.”_

_“Then you know what we’ll do once we’re back on base,” said Big Boss. “Next time will be different. Learn from this. Let it make you stronger, more resilient. Now hop into the chopper, we’re heading home. I’m counting on you, kid. We need someone with your skills.”_

_A longer pause._

_“I know you’re right. Thank you. I won’t disappoint you again, or anyone.”_

_“You didn’t. Do me proud by not throwing your life away for no reason. And there’s never a reason for that.”_

_“Yes, Boss. I won’t.”_

***

He comes to again to the reverberating sound of a gunshot, and a familiar face filling the entirety of his bleary vision. Dead eyes stare right through him, mouth agape. There’s a hole in the temple, fresh blood still running down the forehead in a small rivulet.

It’s the face he has seen in the mirror the doctor had held in front of him. Ahab moves around until he’s on all fours, feeling sore. The right side of his head hurts, like he’s been struck with something hard. The body next to him wears a uniform he knows from somewhere. On the combat vest a patch is sewed on, reading MED.

He starts to dry-retch, because there’s nothing in his stomach.

“Eyes open again?” Ishmael shouts. Ahab hoists himself onto his knees to sit up straight, and turns around just in time to see him kick the body of another dead soldier out into the hallway.

“Come on, we gotta move! There’s no time!” The voice is clear, colors vibrant. He looks around for his handgun, and quickly finds it next to the doctor’s head, perfectly in focus.

His legs feel weak, but he can walk, and follows Ishmael out of the office, towards the stairs leading to the lobby, crowded with enemy soldiers. He counts the hostiles and his remaining bullets, while Ishmael looks at him and unscrews the suppressor of his own pistol.

“I’ll run interference.”


End file.
